Current fave from recent surfing:
Speed-Googling:
The stories were just excessive enough to carry a faint Wodehousian aroma if read in sequence, but not quite excessive enough to arouse suspicion in a newspaper writer on a jag of pre-deadline speed-Googling (Brian Phillips, Fictional Moldovan Soccer Phenom Tells All Slate, 23 Jan 09).
Read More......
Saturday, January 24, 2009
Thursday, January 1, 2009
Half-Ton New Years
I celebrated the holiday by redoing my World History syllabus and writing quizzes for next quarter. Woo Hoo. I simplified the assignment structure-- no attendance, no participation, weekly Desire2Learn quizzes on the readings worth 25% of the final grade, a long-answer 'primary source worksheet' which I've set up so that they will fill out via Desire2Learn, a midterm and final. I just need to get all the quizzes up on the D2L course site, then all I'll have to worry about is tweaking the lectures and writing the essay questions for the exams.
I had the TLC Morbidly Obese Marathon running in the background while I worked all day (and night). It's a mix of schadenfreude and cringing horror. And terror. For ourselves. The announcer reiterates over and over that obesity is a rapidly growing epidemic that is lowering life expectancy for the first time in generations (30% of children overweight or obese; 80% of adults over 25 overweight).
Repeated views of these patients are maddening. It becomes clear that these people are essentially addicted to food--and junk
food at that. They are consuming somewhere between 4,000 to 30,000 calories a day. Their parents and partners are classic 'enablers', and the lying, rationalizing and self-deluding behaviors are identical to that of drug and alcohol addicts.
But as much as you want to shake them and their families and say 'CUT IT THE F*&K OUT',it's much like the way meth has destroyed so many communities. Addiction is a disease. It's a disease whose treatment requires personal change and commitment, but it is a disease. And it's a disease that stems from a social environment. For the latest wave of drug addiction it's been the rise of meth. With obesity, it's the shift to a sedentary service economy and proliferation of fast food. I don't know how you watch these programs and not realize that this is a national emergency (as if we needed another one) that required nationwide social intervention. The question is what and how?
I think the solution could take many lessons from the fight against tobacco: a mix of regulating the industry that is promoting the addiction and creating a social atmosphere that discourages the addictive behavior. Restricting fast food advertising--especially to kids; McDonald's basically does the equivalent of ruthlessly marketing crack to small children--would help. As would the 'fat bastard' tax that New York is instituting (an amazing amount of weight gain stems from the consumption of high calorie soda) and requiring all restaurants to list nutritional contents on ALL menus, akin to what they're doing in California.
And then I think we as a society need to get disapproving. Not of fat people; every individual has their own story of how they got there and all the already existing social prejudice against the overweight clearly isn't doing a thing to help. But we need to get moral about inactivity--about able-bodied people taking the elevator when they can take the stairs. And about super-sizing. Smokers are experiencing so much isolation, so much inconvenience, they're essentially being socially pressured into quitting. And it's working; the numbers of smokers in the US is dropping.
And we need to promote education and the middle class. Obesity, like smoking, is a low-income disease. We live in crazy world where fresh vegetables are unaffordable and Big Macs are cheap. The more education you have, the more likely you are to know how to eat healthily; the more income you have, the more likely you are to be able to afford healthy food.
And thus spaketh the Starving Adjunct. And now, back to early agricultural societies... Read More......
I had the TLC Morbidly Obese Marathon running in the background while I worked all day (and night). It's a mix of schadenfreude and cringing horror. And terror. For ourselves. The announcer reiterates over and over that obesity is a rapidly growing epidemic that is lowering life expectancy for the first time in generations (30% of children overweight or obese; 80% of adults over 25 overweight).
Repeated views of these patients are maddening. It becomes clear that these people are essentially addicted to food--and junk
food at that. They are consuming somewhere between 4,000 to 30,000 calories a day. Their parents and partners are classic 'enablers', and the lying, rationalizing and self-deluding behaviors are identical to that of drug and alcohol addicts.
But as much as you want to shake them and their families and say 'CUT IT THE F*&K OUT',it's much like the way meth has destroyed so many communities. Addiction is a disease. It's a disease whose treatment requires personal change and commitment, but it is a disease. And it's a disease that stems from a social environment. For the latest wave of drug addiction it's been the rise of meth. With obesity, it's the shift to a sedentary service economy and proliferation of fast food. I don't know how you watch these programs and not realize that this is a national emergency (as if we needed another one) that required nationwide social intervention. The question is what and how?
I think the solution could take many lessons from the fight against tobacco: a mix of regulating the industry that is promoting the addiction and creating a social atmosphere that discourages the addictive behavior. Restricting fast food advertising--especially to kids; McDonald's basically does the equivalent of ruthlessly marketing crack to small children--would help. As would the 'fat bastard' tax that New York is instituting (an amazing amount of weight gain stems from the consumption of high calorie soda) and requiring all restaurants to list nutritional contents on ALL menus, akin to what they're doing in California.
And then I think we as a society need to get disapproving. Not of fat people; every individual has their own story of how they got there and all the already existing social prejudice against the overweight clearly isn't doing a thing to help. But we need to get moral about inactivity--about able-bodied people taking the elevator when they can take the stairs. And about super-sizing. Smokers are experiencing so much isolation, so much inconvenience, they're essentially being socially pressured into quitting. And it's working; the numbers of smokers in the US is dropping.
And we need to promote education and the middle class. Obesity, like smoking, is a low-income disease. We live in crazy world where fresh vegetables are unaffordable and Big Macs are cheap. The more education you have, the more likely you are to know how to eat healthily; the more income you have, the more likely you are to be able to afford healthy food.
And thus spaketh the Starving Adjunct. And now, back to early agricultural societies... Read More......
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